I have been fairly busy the last month– more so than even usual with three kids all in extracurricular activities– and one of the more interesting things to occupy my spare time has been the History of England Podcast. And I thought the History of Rome Podcast was long! The History of England has run over a hundred episodes so far, and has just reached the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War! It has obviously entertained me, and I dare say educated me, or I would not have listened so long. It occasionally gives episodic updates on what else is going on in Europe, and obviously a lot of English history post-1066 is intertwined with France’s history, so you’re getting a somewhat wider view than you might think. Combined with Norman Centuries and 12 Byzantine Rulers and you’re getting a much wider view of the Dark and Middle Ages, especially. Can’t wait to fill it out with the History of France in English, maybe the Medieval Archives and the British History Podcast, and even the History of English Podcast…and I can’t wait for somebody to start a Holy Roman Empire podcast! Real opportunity there, people!!
The History of England Podcast
September 25, 2013FoB2: The Battle of Morunnin
August 19, 2013
We played our randomly generated Field of Battle scenario described here Friday night. It went well for the French, with Marshal Dalé’s plan working perfectly– the Russian hordes did, indeed, crash and break against the French rock.
We were a bit short on command stands, which played a bit to the French’s setup advantages. Essentially, the Russians were forced to set up first, and the French responded by setting up entirely on the right half of the table. They placed the imaginary town of Morunnin on their left flank, and the entire left half of their line was able to anchor on a forest edge. On their right, they placed a grand battery-esque concentration of four artillery batteries.
Synchronicity
August 17, 2013
Right now, I have just finished the first two books of Bernard Cornwell’s the Saxon Stories/Tales/Chronicles, whatever it is. They are awesome! The primary protagonists of the series so fare are Halfdan, Ivar the Boneless, and Ubba— the historical leaders of the Great Heathen Army of Danes which conquered almost all of England, leaving only a toehold of swamp for Alfred the Great to stage his great come back from. All three of them were the sons of Ragnar Lothbrook, the star of the History Channel’s Vikings. I can’t believe the “Ancient Nazi Aliens” of the History Channel put out something this good and something this historical– or, if not historical, at least consistent with the legends. It’s not perfect– of course, the hero Ragnar is at both the Lindisfarne and Portland Bay raids, which were six years apart but are represented closely together, in the wrong place, and in the wrong order in the show. But it is still awesome!! I can’t wait to watch some more…and get some more Anglo-Saxons painted and run some Dux Britanniarum games!!
Field of Battle 2 Random Scenario
August 17, 2013
The year is 1807. The Prussians have been humiliated, and the late arriving Russian Army, now under Bennigsen, is trying to surprise the French in a sweeping movement through Prussia.
In the van is Major General Barclay de Tommey (Tom G.), leading his corps on the Prussian town of Morunnin, where Marshal Francois Dalé’s (K. Dale) French corps is assembling to halt the Russian advance.
De Tommey’s plan relied on Flexibility in the face of a wily French foe– he prioritized his ability to Tactically Adjust over all else. Next would be ensuring that he could arrive with more force than his opponent. What few light troops he could spare would be used for Recon, although of course he knew exactly where the French were. And he gave little thought to his Deployment– they were catching the French unawares, and the battle would unfold in his favor no matter how he formed up.
Dalé’s plans were largely the opposite. His Deployment would no doubt be the key to his success, as he hurriedly formed up defensive positions around Morunnin. His Hussars and Chasseurs à Cheval were tasked with shadowing de Tommey and providing information about his troops’ dispositions. No doubt his defensive posture would compensate for the Strength advantage the Russians would have. And there was little thought to Tactical Adjustment once the battle was begun– Dalé would be the rock the Russian wave would crash apart upon.
But, of course, nothing ever goes according to plan.
De Tommey was forced to deploy from march sooner than he had hoped due to French outposts, which hampered his ability to Adjust Tactically. Those outposts then withdrew, leaving him unsatisfied with his Deployment. And he had yet to receive maps from his Prussian allies, and his inadequate Russian maps hampered what Recon he tried.
Dalé had his own problems. His well-intentioned Recon plans were largely thwarted by incompetent planing by his staff, and the suddenness of the Russian arrival. Worse, his outposts had withdrawn in the face of the Russian advance, further disadvantaging his Deployment!
In the end, the Recon and Deployment problems on both forces offset each other. However, the confusion around the disappearing French outposts left one of de Tommey’s brigades in a poor position for the battle. And while the French Recon had been largely unimpressive, the information brought back by the withdrawing outposts providing Dalé and his staff all the information they needed about the Russian deployment!
This is from FoB2’s random scenario generator. Here’s the background of how it was developed.
The setup resolves around four areas of competition between the two forces: Reconnaissance, Strength, Tactical Adjustment and Deployment.
Each force prioritizes those four areas, and gets an appropriate dice based on their C-in-C’s leadership dice. For this, I rated by C-in-C’s as Average, or d10. This gives them a d10, d10, d8 and d6 in each area, based on their priorities.
Tom’s priority order was Tactical Adjustment (d10), Strength (d10), Recon (d8), and Deployment (d6).
I couldn’t get in touch with K. (sorry for the late notice!), so I simply reversed Tom’s priorities: Deployment (d10), Recon (d10), Strength (d8) and Tactical Adjustment (d6).
Next, each side gets three Fate rolls. These are simple one word descriptions of something out of the C-in-C’s hands that modifies the four areas.
For the Russians, I rolled: Deployment -1 due to “Withdraw,” Tactical Adjust -1 due to “Outposts,” and Recon -1 for “Bad Maps.”
For the French, I rolled: Recon -2 for “Enemy in Central Position” and “Poor Staff Planning,” and Deployment -1 for “Withdraw.”
This left the following to roll off and get a result:
Tactical Adjustment: Tom’s d8 vs. K.’s d6, result 3 to 5, since <= 2, no advantage.
Strength: Tom’s d10 vs. K.’s d8, result 4 to 7, 1 level advantage to French
Reconnaissance: Tom’s d6 vs. K.’s d6, 3 to 1, no advantage
Deployment: Tom’s d4 vs. K.’s d8, 1 to 6, 2 level advantage to the French
The end result is that one Russian division will be late to the table, and the French will be able to redeploy two units during set up based on what the Russian deployment looks like.
Throw in a bit of the Battle of Mohrungen, and you got yourself a game, baby!
Joey…you like blog posts about Gladiators?
August 14, 2013
So I picked up a bunch of Crusader Gladiators at Historicon 2012– woof, no, make that 2011!! Wow, how time flies, I swear I thought these hadn’t been sitting around that long. Anyway, over the years, I also grabbed a few different rules to try out with Number One Son, who– at twelve– knows more Roman history than I do. I finally got around to painting up enough gladiators to play some games, as well as a few animals. And Number One Son and I sat down and finally played our first game!
The Crusader packs tend to come with four gladiators per pack– so I actually wound up with quite a few gladiators! I didn’t want to paint them all, so I just grabbed one of several of the primary fighting sytles:
Hoplomachus, Thraex, and Murmillo— believed to be stylized versions of the fighting styles of the Greek Hoplite, the Thracians, and possibly Gauls or even the Roman legionary.
The Secutor and the iconic Retiarius— two later styles without apparent historical precedent, but a very popular match up.
Men killing men gets old after a while– let’s mix it up with some cinematically oversized bears and hyenas!
When I started reading about gladiators, I had no idea that the fighting style were formalized. It wasn’t just two scrappers thrown into a pit with sharp objects. The Retiarius, for example, was a fighting style, a martial art in and of itself. The Retiarius trained in that specific style. And when he fought, it was usually against someone trained and fighting in the Secutor style. It reminds one of sports positions!
I also have four of the well-known sets of gladiator rules– the unfortunately out of print Warhammer Historical’s Gladiator; Two Hour Wargames’ Red Sun, Blue Sky; Flagship Games’ Habet, Hoc Habet; and Morituri te Salutant.
Number One Son and I sat down with Red Sand, Blue Sky. My feelings about these rules– as with most Two Hour Wargames– are mixed. On the one hand, they are generally good, fun, and often innovative games. On the other hand, the presentation is distinctly unprofessional. I’m not complaining about layout or lack of color; I mean, the organization of the rules is terrible. I was able to read and play a game of RSBS without too much difficulty, although Number One Son and I scratched our heads about how we could have used beasts in the arena. There are rules for customizing the beasts’ stats, but there are no stats to start with. It appears they were left out, and are available in the errata on the 2HW Yahoo group. Things get missed, and this specific (albeit major) oversight is just symptomatic of a pattern with 2HW that goes back many, many years. Given their reasonable success, I don’t understand why 2HW hasn’t hired a professional editor or at least found a cadre of capable fans to proof read their rules. Anyway, at this point, the pattern is very clear, so at least I knew what I was buying.
Number One Son took a Retiarius, while I ran a Secutor using the programmatic rules. Ideal for solo play, take note! We rolled some customization– while the Secutor was bog standard, while the Retiarius was of a slight build (-1 Strength), but had a Second Wind (recovering not the usual one but two bonus dice, which serve as stamina, when he rested).
The Secutor came out hard and fast, engaging the Retiarius in the middle of the area with aggressive attacks, and giving the Retiarius a minor cut to his head and belly. The Retiarius replied, trying to entangle the Secutor, but was unable to find an opening. Both watched each other in the middle of the arena, recovering their breath, while the Retiarius looked for an opening. The crowd (me) started to boo the lull in the action! Eventually, the Retiarius made a big move and entangled the Secutor, taking him to the sand. Before he could recover, the Retiarius plunged his trident deep in his upper left leg– a potentially mortal wound!
Given that the match was taking place in the fringes of the Roman Empire, in Numidia, the match was not to the death, and I decided the Secutor would surrender. Things looked bleak– he was Bleeding, so he would lose a Bonus Dice (Stamina) every turn. He was currently Spent (no Bonus Dice), which meant that even resting, at best he could just keep himself from getting any worse. However, any action would cause him to continue to take damage. The Retiarius, though, could recover Bonus Dice and eventually spend them on stronger attacks. Had this been to the death, the Secutor would have been in bad shape indeed!
We both enjoyed the rules. They’re simple, but not too simple. The area is broken up into regions– wall areas on the inside, the heart areas within them, and the center area in, well, the center, the area of prime visibility. If both gladiators are in the same area, they make a Maneuver test to see who will gain the advantage to attack. This is a little different than most war games, but I didn’t have a problem with it.
I had a few criticisms. Primarily, the gladiators in heavier armor didn’t suffer endurance penalties for it, which some people think was an important consideration. Also, there is a mishmash of mechanics– single die roll with bonus to determine move order, buckets of dice for maneuver and combat, and the usual 2HW two dice REP test for other situations. Despite its inelegance, though, it worked well enough. The Non-Player Gladiator (automated opponent) rules were pretty generic and didn’t differentiate between gladiator styles.
But, all in all, we enjoyed it. There’s obviously a lot of room for very detailed combat here. I prefer some simplicity, and felt these gave just about the right amount of complexity. We’ll play a few more times, then start trying some of the other rules. The WH Gladiator book is gorgeous, worth the price just for the pictures alone. Plus, it has a lot more period detail…I imagine it will be next up.
In the Queue
July 29, 2013- Infinity: Paint Fusilier, Croc-Man, two ORCs.
- Terrain: Rework trees. Forest borders.
- D-Day:
Paint bunkers. Touch up beach. Paint 6x DUKWs. Paint P-47 Tbolt. Paint 10.5cm battery. Paint 29th MG platoon. Paint 29th mortar platoon. Flak battery. Run game.- Paint Rangers, LCAs.
- Paint 6x M7 Priests
- Paint beach staff team, observers.
- Other rules: Piquet, Blitzkrieg Commander
- Napoleonics:
Paint Russians.- Buy bases.
- Base unbased Russians.
- Paint command stands.
- Paint casualty markers.
- Run game.
- Lord of the Rings/SAGA: Help N.O.S. paint Mumak. Run game.
- Saga: To support LotR as well.
Buy Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Welsh. Dice. 4Ground Saxon buildings.- Examine river for Saga scenario. Two dark age bridges.
- Paint 6th point Vikings.
- Paint 6th point Anglo-Danes.
- Paint 4 points of Welsh.
- Buy 5th and 6th point of Welsh.
- Consider Normans.
- Prehistorics: Base Neanderthals.
Paint firestarters. Make 2.5″ x 2.5″ fire, burned out counters (how many?).Snow cloth.Run Tusk. Basing materials, base Spinosaurus. Run dino hunting. - Cowboys: Build courthouse. Run Cimarron courthouse game. Finish gallows.
- Bolt Action: Receive rules. Assemble, paint hanomag.
Finish bases on 101st.Run game. - French and Indian War: Paint 20 militia. Paint 20 Indians.
Longer term thinking…
- Flames of War:
- Further D-Day: Brit Paras (also Op:MG), Brit infantry, Brit armour, full Rangers. Brit landing?
- US Airborne in Sicily
- Gladiators. Paint, play. Animals to fight? Have bear, hyenas, gorilla, okay lions.
- Tomorrow’s War exist 15mm Sci-Fi, Force on Force existing Iraq
- 6mm Yom Kippur War with Cold War Commander.
- Hirst fantasy terrain for LotR?
- Have lots of AK-47 stuff…arrange and paint up for a game?
Historicon 2013: Saturday
July 28, 2013
Stayed up late again, got up early again. Still, no real plan. I wandered around looking at the games, and fortunately was able to hop into one of the best looking games at Historicon– a speculative game of the Battle of Fort DeRussy, an ACW Brother Against Brother game.
S-221 Fort DeRussy, Louisiana – March
14, 1864
American Civil War; 9 AM; Length: 5 hrs; Hosted by: John McConnell;
Scale: 28mm; Rules: Brother Against Brother (Modified); No. of
Players: 12.
A small Confederate garrison of holds the fortification known
as Fort DeRussy in front of a much larger Union force at the
start of the Red River Campaign. Just a few weeks later, this
same Union army will be defeated at the battle of Mansfield.
What if the Confederates had moved a little quicker, and the
Union army a little slower, and instead the two armies fought
over possession of the fort? Under 15 permitted with an Adult.
I, unfortunately, didn’t take as many pictures of this beautiful game as I should have, but you will have no problem finding others. This huge, fun, beautiful game really stood out.
To facilitate such a large game, the GMs had made a pretty simple rules modification. Instead of an activation card per unit, they had Union/Confederate Red/White/Blue/Green. When a side/color combination was called, everybody typically had a unit designated by that color to activate. It worked really well. The game was large but went reasonably quickly.
I came out of it a tad discouraged, through no fault of this great game. I have been poking at 40mm FIW for quite a while. I own both This Very Ground and Brother Against Brother to play with them some day. Yet both rules left me a bit unsatisfied this con. I had fun with both and would definitely play both again! But I wondered about the fairness of TVG, and BAB was really written for a much larger figure count than I would be putting on the table any time soon. But, the con wasn’t over quite yet. After taking an easy lunch and lounging around the con a bit, I secured a spot in:
S-279 Muskets & Tomahawks: Battle of
Bloody Run 1763
French & Indian War; 6 PM; Length: 4 hrs; Hosted by: Thomas Keegan;
Scale: 28mm; Rules: Muskets & Tomahawks; No. of Players: 6.
In the pre-dawn hours of July 31, 1763 Captain Dalyell sallied
from the besieged Fort Detroit to punish the insolence of the
Native Americans by burning their villages. Pontiac, well
aware of the British plans, lay in wait for the overconfident
attackers, eager to fulfill a prophecy that the British would
be driven from America. Will Bloody Run flow with British or
Native American blood?
More Pontiac’s Rebellion anniversary gaming!
I have held Musket & Tomahawks in my hands repeatedly. It’s from the maker of Saga, which I enjoy, although they are altogether different games. It’s just $40 for the rules, for a game I most likely won’t play any time soon! 40mm FIW is definitely one of those “someday” games. I get the figures out and paint a unit every now and then, when the whim strikes. $40 for yet another set of rules I won’t play is just a waste.
And yet…they gave a really great game. I have usually disliked spotting rules, but I thought they worked well here. My Light Infantry could not see the natives in the woods until they were right on top of me! Not just that, but the figure count wasn’t really out of line with what I could reasonable accomplish, even in 40mm. And, I probably had half the figures for this very scenario right now! I came out of this game stoked up and ready to buy M&T and a bunch of Sash and Sabre!
My two Light Infantry and two dummy markers skulk through the corn fields, providing flank security to the regulars marching up the road towards the Indian village.
All the irregular units started as hidden markers, which made spotting even that much more difficult.
The Light Infantry take cover along a wall and wait for things to develop. Pontiac sneaks to the forest edge and his braves fire a desultory volley. The lights return a statistically highly improbable roll and Pontiac’s braves evaporate.
Like Last of the Mohicans, the natives burst from the woods and fall upon the regulars. Fighting was tough, but the regulars manage to hold their own. Roger’s Rangers received some cold revenge from the FIW with only Roger himself returning to tell the tale.
The spotting table. Simple and deterministic, I liked it.
In the end, neither side had achieved their primary objectives. Each player had a secondary objective, and the Brits pulled out a narrow victory based on scoring those. Tom, the GM, has his own write up of the game here. Draw?!!? What?!?! It was CLEARLY the Brits by a nose. Harrumph…
Fortunately, the dealer hall had closed by the time this game had ended. I dithered the next morning about swinging by the hall on the way out of town and at least picking up M&T, but in the end, declined. I need to get more figures painted. I have about 40 more figures left from the initial purchase in…um, wow…possibly 2007. Possibly even before. Wow, time flies when you get old.
Historicon 2013: Friday
July 27, 2013
On to Friday! I suppose technically Friday began Thursday night, as I stayed up late drinking Yuengling and just hanging out. I then work up early and hit the ground running again, in a hurry to do nothing. I may not have had any plans, but I can sleep at home! I cruised around, taking in the sites, strolling through the vendor hall, and hit the flea market. And in that flea market, I found…more Russians! For some very great prices, I picked up (if I recall correctly) sixteen stands of guns, two and a half regiments of cavalry, and another twelve battalions of foot!! At this point, I’m thinking this is about three, possibly four, divisions of Russians. That’s more than I was planning on in the first place!
Quick pic of the haul:
I went back to the hotel, stashed away my wares, ate lunch, then headed back to another event that I was, somewhat surprisingly, targeting:
F-220 The Age of Arthur: An
Introduction to DBA
Dark Ages; 12 PM; Length: 4 hrs; Hosted by: Chris Brantley; Scale:
15mm; Rules: DBA rules, version 2.2+; No. of Players: 0.
It is the Age of Arthur and Vortigern and the fate of Romano-
Celtic Britain hangs in the balance. Take on the role of a British
dux bellorum, Saxon warchief or Pictish toisech. With each
victory and defeat, you can change the map of Britain. This is
a walk-up gaming opportunity designed to introduce players
to the fast-play 2.2+ version of De Bellis Antiquitatis ancient
and medieval rules. Play one game or play a dozen. This is
a walk-up event so c’mon by – no ticket is necessary! DBA
tutors on hand to help introduce you to the game, teach and
answer questions. Experienced players also welcome. Can you
rally the Britains to hold back the barbarian hordes? Or will
the Saxon warbands of Horst and Hengist (and the Picts in
the North) overthrow kings and carve out new lands to rule?
Participants are eligible for raffle prizes including Splintered
Light Miniatures’ Saxon and Sub-Roman DBA army packs.
Unlimited participation over each session. Sit down and play
for just 30 minutes, or try again and again! For NEW players.
Kid friendly.
I have owned DBA for just about as long as I have been into historical miniatures, but never played a game of it. I had 15mm Essex New Kingdom Egyptians and Hittites for many, many years, with a pathetic one stand of archers painted, before finally selling them away and turning my back on DBA forever. Well…until Number One Son started taking a big interest in ancient Rome. There’s no way I’m going to go big into ancients just because my twelve year old son is interested– he’d be out of the house before I ever finished! But…twelve stand armies? A twelve stand army or two, that I could do. And then I found Corvus Belli army packs for Polybian Romans, Later Carthaginians and ancient Britons on Bartertown, dirt cheap…it just seemed the DBA stars were aligning.
What can I say, I enjoyed the demo! No, the rules aren’t much fun to decipher, nor is the game any great spectacle. Yet, it’s easy to get going, fun to play and finishes in an hour or two. I wish there were more miniatures games you could play with so little commitment and cost!!
I thought the campaign aspect of the tutorial games was a great idea– I took a province for the Saxons (white), but the Britons (red) held their own, and we divided Britain between us, at the expense of the Picts (green).
I didn’t win the door prizes. Ah, well!
I puttered around again until it was time for Vauban’s Wars. It’s quite a different game from the typical miniatures game– it covers a full 18th century(ish) siege, with each turn representing a week’s time.
Here, you can see us starting the game. The Poles are inside the fortifications, and we Russians are digging zig-zag trenches in from the first parallel. We didn’t see a whole lot of good possibly wasting our powder supplies bombarding from long range, so we held our fire for now, until we could move our guns forward.
Whoops!! Lucky shot sets off a Polish magazine! The resulting explosion destroyed two supply points of the garrison’s power (they started with five, I believe, so very significant), and also damaged the wall section at that location!
Now the Russians have their second parallels started, and have moved some guns forward to open up on Praga.
The Poles sortie out to attack the sappers!
Nail-biting finish– the Russians are ready for the assault, but it is down to the wire before a relieving army shows up and the siege must be halted! If the Relief card turns up for the Poles before the Russian Assault card, they win– but it doesn’t. The Russians assault, finishing this game with a win. However, ideally, it is now set up for a tactical game. Given time, we could continue with a tabletop game from these positions and actually play out the assault!
Historicon 2013: Thursday
July 26, 2013
I traveled to Fredericksburg, VA, again this year for Historicon. I honestly have yet to have had a bad Historicon, so if I tell you, yet again, that I had a blast, I’m not sure how you should take it! I will say that I had concerns this year. I typically hunt for games with interesting rules I haven’t gotten a chance to see in the flesh and try to get in those. However, this year, every set I could think of that fell into that category– notably Maurice and Dux Britanniarum— wasn’t being run. In fact, I only preregistered for two games, and wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about either (and, in fact, played in neither). There were a few things I was definitely interested in, though. Of primary interest was the Vauban’s Wars playtest, an unofficial game.
My usual convention companion Bob and I drove about seven and a half hours up to Fredericksburg. This shaves about two and a half hours off our old drive time up to Lancaster, which frankly feels like a lot more when you’re driving it than it sounds when I write it on my blog. We stayed at the Hampton Inn, which was nice again this year. It was about what you’d expect, but done well. Coffee was ready all day, cookies were laid out in the evening, breakfast was decent and different each day. The Host will always have a sentimental place in my heart, but I’d much, much rather actually stay at the Hamption Inn!! That may change the first con with bad rains– we’ll see how I feel about walking to the convention center then! But this year, the weather was clear and very hot.
Thursday morning saw me grab a spot in a 250th anniversary of Pontiac’s Rebellion game of the the Battle of Bushy Run. From the PEL:
T-425 The Battle of Bushy Run 1763
Other; 9 AM; Length: 4 hrs; Hosted by: Cliff Brunken; Scale: 28 mm;
Rules: This Very Ground; No. of Players: 6.
Come experience the 250th Anniversary of this pivotal battle
that ended the Indian rebellion to open the way for western
expansion. Come join Col. Henry Bouquet, the 42nd and 77th
Highlanders with the 60th Royal Americans as they march to
the relief of Fort Pitt and are ambushed by a combination of
North American Indian tribes. After fighting until sunset the
survivors build a make shift redoubt and continue the fight in
the morning. Hand to hand, man to man and bayonet vs. the
hatchet. Scenario designed by Gregory Padilla. Children under
12 accompanied by an adult.
I like This Very Ground, and own a copy for that far distant day when I have my own FIW figures finished. However, I thought the hand-to-hand combat here was pretty brutal, in the Indians’ favor. I talked with another Indian player, and we kind of agreed that the scenario might have been a bit fairer had we not been informed that the game would be scored specifically on how many pack mules the British got off the table. This let us recklessly charge in and kill them. Had our objective been a bit more nebulous– “Ft. Pitt is down this road. Make sure it doesn’t get resupplied,” the game might have lasted a bit longer. Still, it was a fun game, and it sounded like it had been played several times without quite such a brutal result. I will chalk it up to superior generalship on the part of (at least one of) the Indian generals!
And that was it for playing on Thursday! I actually decided that I would rather just take it easy the rest of the day. I wandered the flea market and the vendor hall, and socialized with people, and generally relaxed. The dealer room seemed quite full, a bit more so than last year. I did wind up with a significant purchase from the dealer room. I have been saving my shekels to send off a bunch of 15mm Napoleonic Russians to be painted in Sri Lanka, probably by Fernando. However, I saw that GAJO Miniatures had stock on hand, for not a lot more than what shipping to Sri Lanka would have cost. And better yet, they had them NOW. So, I bought up the Russian foot he had– about ten battalion of line and Jaeger. I bought two units of cavalry, but held off on the artillery. The cost was a bit much, and I thought I could knock that out quickly enough on my own.
Later that evening, I hung around Peter Anderson‘s Battle of Möckern game. Peter always puts on some impressive Piquet games, and this was no exception!
T-237 Battle of Mockern October 16,
1813
Napoleonic; 6 PM; Length: 4 hrs; Hosted by: Peter Anderson; Scale:
28mm; Rules: Field of Battle, 2nd edition by Piquet; No. of Players: 6.
On the opening day of the Battle of Leipzig, Blucher’s attack
from the North prevents Marmont’s Corps from aiding
Napoleon’s main attack in the South. Teens age 14 and above
welcome with a playing adult.
D-Day AAR
November 2, 2012
So this is a very late game report, but we did actually manage to run our first big D-Day game! This was 2,375 points of Americans run by two players, and 1,345 points of Germans run by me. This still was not a lot of Germans, and I felt fairly thin across my front. However, I probably would have put up a much better fight had my artillery not gotten pinned down in the preliminary bombardment, and refused to unpin for six turns in a row!!
The first waves were infantry only. A few boats were held up, and the landing was immediately stronger on the German’s right.
It took them, I think, two turns to actually kill the first AT bunker. The Amis then brought their DD and LCT Shermans in at that spot. The comment was, “reenforcing success.”
Notice the flickering smoke markers! I never really got around to making the full on markers like I have discussed in the past– but the LED under some dark grey wool roving really worked well!
Six. Turns. My artillery would not unpin for six whole turns. By that time, the Amis had killed the observer watching the beach on the right, and I had not placed them where they could direct fire at anything.
Once the Shermans got off the beach, things started to look very ugly indeed…
The Americans land their 105 battery in great order, but it’s unnecessary as the Shermans break into the open!
The German CO is machine gunned down and he sprints across the board to try and spot for his artillery. The American objective is theirs to take, and the German objective is defended by a platoon in a hegedrow…directly in front of the Shermans led by one with a dozer blade. Not looking good at ALL. It was late, and we called the game.
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